Future technologies in total artificial heart development: can a robot become as good as a donor heart?

Heart failure is a growing cardiovascular disease epidemic worldwide. Despite improvements in treating patients with heart failure, still many patients develop end-stage heart disease and require hospitalization, treatments with high complication rates and risk a premature death. Heart transplantation is the preferred treatment of end-stage heart failure, but there is a significant shortage of donor hearts. For this reason, researchers have been trying for decades to find an implantable mechanical pump that can take over the function of the human heart; a total artificial heart (TAH).1 Typically, a TAH is a rigid mechanical device that has two blood chambers and is actuated by a moving membrane that pushes out the blood. In 1969, the first TAH implantation in humans was performed by Denton Cooley (Texas Heart Institute, Houston, TX, USA).